Good resources to understand how LaTeX is constructed layer after layer?

Asked May 11 '14 at 12:50

Active Nov 07 '15 at 07:28

Viewed 94 times

I have been a user of LaTeX for a couple of years now, and I would like to start to be involved in the writing packages. The problem is that currently, a lot of things appear to me as "black magic".

In C and C++, I have a good culture of how the languages work from the raw hardware to the compiler and the high-level part (the part that most people use), but for the moment, in LaTeX, I only know the "high-level" layer and I would like to understand the basics starting from "the bare metal".

What would be good resources to understand the whole logic behind TeX and LaTeX, how does it work "behind the scenes" and how it is constructed layer after layer ?

edited Nov 07 '15 at 07:28

Joseph Wright

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asked May 11 '14 at 12:50

user51500

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To understand TeX, read The TeXbook... – Werner May 11 '14 at 13:09
The contents of TEXMFMAIN/tex/latex/base/, the TeXbook (as Werner said), TeX by Topic... – cfr May 11 '14 at 13:21
Welcome to TeX.SX! You can have a look at our starter guide to familiarize yourself further with our format. A suggestion: Do us a favour and change your username to something more telling than "user1234". – Martin Schröder May 12 '14 at 00:36
I've been going through and cleaning the [tag:latex3] tag, but if this is asking partly about LaTeX3, Frank wrote a wonderful article about it: What can I do to help the LaTeX3 Project?. – Sean Allred May 21 '15 at 15:45

Good resources to understand how LaTeX is constructed layer after layer?

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